"Hello I'm Michael Kogon, CEO of Definition 6, a Unified Marketing Agency. I get a question a lot times, what is a Unified Marketing Agency? What does unified marketing mean to you?
About two and a half years ago we decided that the industry and society was ready to change from integrated marketing to unified marketing. Integrated marketing for a long time has been consistent messaging across multiple mediums making sure at each touch point your message resonated. You wanted to integrate your campaign so that your PR, your collateral, your TV, your event marketing, all matched. It was all integrated together and well-coordinated. And I still believe that's very important, as a matter of fact unified marketing doesn't eliminate that, it actually builds on top of it. We decided to do some deep-thinking and create a unified marketing approach to a modern day era.
A modern day era is where you never know what two mediums or more than two mediums your consumer would be accessing your message at any given time. An easy example is while watching TV, what is their 2nd screen experience or 3rd screen experience? I watch the TV while I have my iPad on my lap and the smartphone in my hand. Suddenly, a brand has to deal with that one consumer in that one viewing moment, they could be multitasking or distracted, or they could be accessing that same brand's message in multiple places. TV spot takes them to a URL and at the same time they get involved in a hashtag event. That's what we started to realize was going on so we decided that unified marketing would be the notion of creating a unified experience across all usage occasions that would happen while brands and people are in motion.
Brands and people in motion describe this multi-screen or multi touch point event. Retail shopping is another very good example. It used to be that once you captured somebody into your retail store, (let's talk about clothing retail as an example), you had merchandising, you had some good price points, you had good display capability, but they're a very captive audience. Well now, with shopping comparison sites, with the ability to put QR codes into tags, the ability to order in-store and ship online, or buy, deliver at home, and return in the store with again, the smartphone being one of the biggest changers out there. We really talk about how we have to unify that experience, so when we talk about the brand and people in motion, it's that person, that brand, that shopping experience all are moving through the relationship.
Let's talk about what that means; we talk about in motion, it's not only a mobile designation, although that's a big part of it. It's also recognizing that as our relationship moves from let's say, no awareness to awareness, or from awareness to trial, or even first-time purchase to second-time purchase consideration, you're in a different relationship modality with your customer. And when that customer is at a different mode in each of those relationship moments they have different information, experience needs, and usage occasions. A brand that doesn't recognize we can be in multiple places at one time in that relationship such as, "I've bought from you once before, I'm on a retail site, I'm thinking about buying something else, let me check to see if any of my network has any positive or negative things to say," you're dealing with a lot of those relationship moments at the same exact time. Unified Marketing allows you to capture on that from a thinking basis, from an ad-spend basis, from a content creation basis, and more importantly from a customer satisfaction or delight framework.
That's really what we mean by Unified Marketing, it's connecting brands and people in motion, it's unifying the experience across all mediums and all usage types simultaneously and recognizing the wealth of things that come in to influence consumers is much different than it was let's say, three or four years ago. We think it's working very well, our brands are seeing double digit increases in sales and volume and brand health metrics, and we're seeing the need to create unifying experiences across all of those different types of access points is really important to a modern day marketer.
Hopefully that helps you understand what Unified Marketing is, good talking to you. I look forward to speaking again."
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